About the Art Spaces Directory

The Art Spaces Directory is an international guide to the sites where contemporary art
and artists are nurtured, interrogated, and sustained. Building on the Museum as
Hub model, the 2012 New Museum Triennial, "The Ungovernables," incorporated
lengthy consultation with a network of curators, organizations, and artists from around
the world, including Museum as Hub partners. Their contributions have inspired the Art
Spaces Directory, a resource guide to over 400 independent art spaces from ninety-six
countries around the world. The Art Spaces Directory was edited by Eungie Joo, Keith Haring Director of Education and Public Programs, and Ethan Swan, Education Associate.

Director’s Foreword

Independent art spaces are crucial venues to foster communities as well as platforms for
younger artists. It is often artists themselves who tenaciously build these spaces to show new
art, frequently in a non-commercial setting. As a result, many art spaces are short-term ventures
that respond to a need at a particular time and place. In recogni- tion of the spirit and
determination of these spaces, which have given crucial exposure to many of the artists
included in “The Ungovernables,” this directory highlights over 400 art spaces located in 96
countries around the world. “The Ungovernables” exhibition marks the second iteration of the
New Museum’s Triennial and features 34 artists, artist groups and temporary collectives, many
of whom have never before exhibited in the US. The Art Spaces Directory also advances the
New Museum’s mission to support innovative and entrepreneurial endeavors in contemporary
art and will serve as an extraordinary resource for artists, curators, patrons, students and the
broader public interested in emerging art practices.

I want to extend my deepest gratitude to Eungie Joo, Keith Haring Director and Curator of
Education and Public Programs, who envisioned and curated “The Ungovernables.” Joo
conducted primary research for the Triennial in more than 20 countries over the course of 18
months, visiting hundreds of artists in the process and dozens of independent spaces. In
addition, she has directed the Museum as Hub international partnership at the New Museum
which had a signiﬁcant role in shaping the 2012 Triennial and was the inspiration for the Art
Spaces Directory.

Since 2006, Museum as Hub has explored new models of curatorial practice and institutional
collaboration to support art activities and experimentation; it has also served as an important
resource for the public to learn about contemporary art from around the world. Initiated by the
New Museum, partners have included: art space pool, Seoul, South Korea; Insa Art Space,
Seoul, South Korea; Museo Experimental El Eco, Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Tamayo, Mexico
City, Mexico; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt; and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the
Nether- lands. These crucial partnerships have been pivotal in helping to bring this incisive
publication together.

The Art Spaces Directory endeavor would not have been possible without the belief and
generosity of our support- ers. We are tremendously grateful for the support of the exhibition’s
title sponsor, Joe Fresh, a Canadian fashion brand. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual
Arts gave early funding for the Triennial as well as support for the curatorial research and travel
so critical for this initiative. Additional support has been provided by the Jacques and Natasha
Gelman Trust, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Fundación Almine y Bernard RuizPicasso para el Arte and the Asian Cultural Council.

We especially want to thank the generous Friends of “The Generational” co-chaired by New
Museum Trustees Shelley Fox Aarons, Lonti Ebers and Toby Devan Lewis, whose early support
and enthusiasm was signiﬁcant. We are very grateful to our wonderful Steering Committee
Members of the Friends of “The Generational”: The Booth Heritage Foundation Inc.; Ellyn and
Saul Dennison; Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg; Susan and Leonard Feinstein; María José Garcés;
Carol and Arthur A. Goldberg; Sunny and Brad Goldberg; Lietta and Dakis Joannou; Tina Kim
and Jaewoong Chung; Sueyun Locks; Shaun Caley Regen; Lyndley and Samuel Schwab; Eve
Steele and Peter Gelles; and Laurie and David Wolfert. Special thanks to our Friends of “The
Generational”: Lorenzo Martone, Kathleen O’Grady and Ana Sokoloff.

This book was produced in partnership with ArtAsiaPaciﬁc magazine, whose publisher and
editor-in-chief, Elaine W. Ng, actively participated in this directory and whose enthusiasm for the
project was instrumental. Additional support for this publication is made possible by the J.
McSweeney and G. Mills Publications Fund at the New Museum and a grant from the Elizabeth
Firestone Graham Foundation, with the support of the Burger Collection, Hong Kong, The
Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation, Anna-Maria Rossi and Fabio Rossi, and The Mathur
Family. Finally, the New Museum salutes all the contributors and all of the participating artist
spaces for creating a book that will no doubt be an eye-opening must-read for everyone
invested in contemporary art across the globe.

In 1977, Marcia Tucker founded the New Museum with the hope of creating a ﬂexible institution
that could respond to rapid developments in contemporary art. In her memoirs, she described
the urgency for a smaller space that could contend with the fervor of emerging art forms: “the
bigger museums were ill-equipped to respond quickly to radical or sudden changes in the arts,
in part because exhibitions had to be scheduled years ahead of time to allow for securing loans,
preparing a catalogue and, most important of all, obtaining funding.” The New Museum was
founded as an alternative space in the heyday of alternative art spaces. Thirty-ﬁve years later,
this urgency is only magniﬁed as the museum has grown and as current events, developments
in technology and expanding deﬁnitions of artistic practice demand increasingly rapid responses
from arts organizations. In spite of many changes in the landscape–and in some cases,
because of them–the same need that instigated the founding of the New Museum remains a
vital force in contemporary art, and our hope is that this book serves to acknowledge the
immense possibilities manifested by independent art spaces.

By Lisa PhillipsLisa Phillips is the Toby Devan Lewis Director of the New Museum.

Introduction

The Art Spaces Directory is a direct result of and homage to the Museum as Hub initiative and
its role in shaping the 2012 New Museum Triennial, “The Ungovernables.” Both a physical site
and an expanding network of international art spaces, initiatives and artists, the Museum as Hub
investigates the potential of experimentation and exchange through residencies, exhibitions and
public programs. Initiated by the New Museum in 2006, founding partners include: art space
pool, Seoul, South Korea; Insa Art Space, Seoul, South Korea; Museo Experimental El Eco,
Mexico City, Mexico; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico; Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt;
and the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Our ongoing relationships with these
organizations have inspired us to create this directory as a way to bring together an expanded
constellation of independent, non-collecting spaces–a network of sites where issues central to
our initiative are being examined rigorously and continuously.

Through their daring, agility and commitment, independent art spaces provide a location for
young artists to be nurtured, interrogated and sustained. Initiated by artists, curators and
engaged individuals, such spaces respond to local needs and concerns. Often short-lived and
overwhelmingly non-commercial in orientation, they are unencum- bered by forces of commerce
and legacy, freeing them to take risks and present work that would not be possible elsewhere. In
acknowledgment of this support and its crucial role in the development of artists included in
“The Ungovernables,” and inspired by the Japan Foundation’s publication Alternatives1, this directory brings together proﬁles on over 400 art spaces from 96 countries. By focusing on arts
organizations with innovative programming, we hope this directory serves as a useful resource
for artists, arts professionals, patrons and the public to support future activity in contemporary
art.

To gather this information, we distributed a simple, two-page questionnaire by direct invitation
and through open calls, which asked spaces to self-present their programming. For this reason,
the Art Spaces Directory should not be considered exhaustive. The 12 months that passed
during the research and production of this book marked dramatic changes, including revolutions
in Egypt, Libya, Syria and Tunisia; destructive earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan; and the
emergence of the Occupy movement. As a consequence of these kinds of economic, political
and logistical realities, several spaces were not able to submit materials. The resultant
documentation of exhibitions, programs, screenings, performance and other forms of
presentation is organized into individual proﬁles. These proﬁles are divided into three
geographical regions, with each region organized alphabetically by country and city. Divided
through natural borders–the Atlantic Ocean, the Paciﬁc Ocean and the Ural Mountains/Indian
Ocean–the regions are intentionally broad, creating an opportunity to re-think regionalism,
proximity and the possibilities for dialogue.

The entries are contextualized by a series of essays and discussions by an international
selection of curators, critics and artists. These contributions assess the determination,
consequence and limitations of independent spaces and suggest possibilities for future activity.
Examining new curatorial and creative models, the writings also consider larger trajectories of
resistance and remind us of the mortality of the alternative. We are grateful to contributors
Víctor Albarracín, Reem Fadda and Christine Tohme, Stefan Kalmár, Naiza H. Khan, Catalina
Lozano, Elaine W. Ng and tranzit.org for lending their viewpoints and observations to this
directory.

Today, vast compilations of information are often relegated to websites and smart-phone
applications, which are constantly updated and expanded. For this project, we purposefully
chose to publish a reference guide in the form of a book as a document of this moment–a
document of the current landscape of independent art spaces in 2012. More than half of the
spaces contained within this directory were founded in the past ten years, many to address
speciﬁc regional or media-based needs. As movements are born or reformed, it is impossible to
imagine how many spaces will emerge in the next decade, or which of the included spaces will
still exist in 2022. The printed book also creates an opportunity for readers to quickly leap
between regions and spaces, discovering resonances and critical differences.

Many colleagues contacted or suggested other organizations for this publication, and a list of
Acknowledgments follows this introduction. But several individuals must be mentioned here.
Initial research for the directory began in 2010 with the enthusiastic support of Museum as Hub
Fellows Helga Just Christoffersen, Alhena Katsof and Erik Pauhrizi. Museum as Hub partner
curators Annie Fletcher, Heejin Kim, Tobias Ostrander, Daniela Pérez, Sarah Rifky and William
Wells provided critical early support, ideas and contacts. Curatorial Assistant Ryan Inouye
actively participated in the conceptualization of this publication and also guided early research.
Christopher Green entries. And intern Leire San Martin dedicated her energy to the crucial ﬁnal
hours of production. We thank you all for your signiﬁcant contribution to this project.

Many thanks to the design team NR2154, who responded to our invitation to compete for the
design of the directory and brilliantly envisioned a way to present consistent information without
monotony on their ﬁrst try. We would also like to thank Deputy Director and Director of External
Affairs Karen Wong for her conﬁdence in the relevance of this publication, Copy Editor &
Publications Coordinator Sarah Stephenson, for her vast editorial and production support and
Online Manager Tory Peterschild and Graphic Designer & Production Manager Richard
Espinosa for their late night assistance with inline edits to keep us on schedule. The committed
work of Associate Director and Director of Institutional Advancement Regan Grusy and her team
has been essential to this project.

Finally, this book would not have been possible without the partnership of our co-publisher,
ArtAsiaPaciﬁc, whose publisher and editor-in-chief, Elaine W. Ng, actively solicited dozens of
spaces to participate while enlisting numer- ous colleagues to recommend additional spaces,
and whose editor, Hanae Ko, has served as copy editor for the essays as well as each proﬁle
entry. We are grateful for the expertise and assistance of ArtAsiaPaciﬁc’s entire editorial team,
especially Eti Bonn-Muller, Don J. Cohn, Linda Da Cruz, Olivier Krischer, Ashley Lee, HG
Masters, William Pym and Kathy Zhang.

On behalf of the New Museum, we extend our sincerest gratitude to all the individuals, from
interns to directors, of the participating spaces that provided information for the directory. We
know you work with limited staff and resources, and appreciate your assistance in amassing the
content for this project. We hope this directory reminds the public of your signiﬁcant roles in
contemporary art production and serves as a testament to our great admiration of your work.

By Eungie Joo and Ethan SwanEungie Joo is Keith Haring Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New
Museum, New York, and curator of the 2012 New Museum Triennial, “The Ungovernables.”
Ethan Swan is a writer and musician and Education Associate at the New Museum, New York.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the following individuals who were instrumental in compiling the Art Spaces Directory: